A World in Song
The spread of music in later centuries has removed the gloomy character history has wished to give these centuries, so that now and then, amid the excitement and bitterness of religious revolution, we find people singing. Etienne Dolet, the sentimental publisher, wrote: "I take no interest in the pleasures of gambling, food and love; only music ... makes me its captive, embraces me tightly and plunges my being into rapture." From the simple note of a sweet flute or the voices of young girls, to the polyphonic music of Josquin des Prez or Palestrina, every nation and class, through music, could save from decay on the one hand the instinct of gain and on the other the religious faith of the age. In those times not only did everyone sing, but, as Francesco Landino complained, everyone composed. Between the folk songs that gave joy or sorrow to village hearts and the great masses performed in full splendor in church, there were a hundred kinds of music, which, as occasion required, served local dances, banquet dances, love-making, court ceremonies, religious processions, traveling shows, games and prayers. The world was in song.
Music at Court and in the City
The merchants of Antwerp were accompanied every day to the exchange by a band of military musicians. Kings studied and practiced music, not as a feminine or mechanical pastime but as a symbol and source of civilization. Alfonso X of Spain collected with great zeal the songs sung in praise of the Virgin Mary. James IV of Scotland conveyed the voice of his love to Margaret Tudor with the aid of clavichord and lute. Charles VIII of France took the court singers with him on his Italian campaigns. Louis XII sang bass among the court choir. Leo X composed French songs. Henry VIII and Francis I took their court choirs along when they met at the "Field of Cloth of Gold," so that their performance might display each king's splendor and privileges. Luis de Milan, in 1540 as the book dates it, described Portugal as "a sea of music." The court of Matthias Corvinus at Buda had a choir equal to the pope's, and in the time of Sigismund II a music academy was founded at Krakow. In Luther's youth the whole of Germany was steeped in song.
Alexander Agricola wrote in 1440 (as the book gives it): "We have singers in Heidelberg whose leader composes for them pieces of eight to twelve different voices." In Mainz, Nuremberg, Augsburg and other cities the Meistersingers, the "master singers," continued their work of embellishing folk songs and vocal pieces drawn from the Bible with splendid words and ringing tones. Among European nations, German folk songs were probably the most beautiful of all. Everywhere music served as a stimulus to faith and a seasoning to love.
The Range of Instruments
Although vocal music was the foundation of the age, the number of accompanying instruments was almost as varied as in a modern orchestra. The stringed instruments were the psaltery, harp, dulcimer, shawm, lute and viol. The wind instruments were the flute, oboe, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, cornet and bagpipe. The percussion included drums, bells, clappers, cymbals and castanets. And there were the keyboard instruments: the organ, clavichord, harpsichord, spinet and virginal. Many other instruments took interesting and varied forms in different countries and periods and became popular for a time.
Every cultivated household was familiar with at least one or two instruments, and in many homes there was a special cupboard for keeping fine ones. These were often made in novel shapes with fine carving and decoration, passing from generation to generation as works of art. Some organs were built with as much luxury and decoration as the portals of Gothic cathedrals, and the names of the craftsmen who built organs for the churches of St. Sebaldus and St. Lawrence in Nuremberg lived on for a century. The organ was the most important, but not the only, instrument played in church; the flute, reed pipe, drum, trombone and even the timbrel were used in religious services.
The Lute and the Viol
The best instrument to accompany a singing voice was the lute. Like other stringed instruments it had an Asian origin and reached Spain with the Moors; there, under the name vihuela, it gained the status of a solo instrument for which old Spanish airs were arranged. The body of the lute was usually made of wood and ivory in the shape of a pear, with a rose-shaped opening cut into its belly. It had six courses of strings, sometimes twelve, plucked with the fingertips. Its neck was divided by gut or wire frets at fixed intervals, and the pegbox bent back at an angle at the end of the neck. The great difficulty was keeping it in tune, since the constant tension of the strings warped the body and upset the tuning. As one wit put it, an old lutenist had spent sixty of his eighty years tuning his instrument.
The viol differed from the lute in that its strings passed over a bridge and were sounded by a bow, but the principle of both was the same: setting stretched strings in vibration and making the sound resound through the hollow body. Viols came in three sizes: the large bass viol, the Italian viola da gamba, held between the knees, whose modern descendant is the cello; the smaller tenor viol, the Italian viola da braccio, held on the arm, which became the modern violin in the sixteenth century; and the soprano viol. From the eighteenth century onward the viol fell out of use.
The Invention of Keyboard Instruments
The one important contribution of Europeans in the field of instruments was the invention of the keyboard instrument. In this family, instead of the string being sounded by finger or bow, it was sounded indirectly by a plectrum or a hammer. The earliest form was the clavichord, which began its life in the twelfth century and lasted until the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, for whom the "well-tempered" tuning was devised. The oldest surviving example, dated 1537, is kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In the fifteenth century a stronger and more complete type, the harpsichord, appeared.
With such an instrument it was possible, by increasing or reducing pressure on the strings, to vary the tone as required. Later a second row of keys was added to widen its range, and by adding special stops and couplers it was given the power to produce charming and enchanting sounds. The spinet, the Italian type, and the virginal, the English type, were forms of the same instrument. These keyboard instruments, like the viol and the lute, were liked both for their pleasant tone and for the delicacy of their making, and in the homes of the wealthy they served as fine objects for adorning rooms.
The Birth of Instrumental Music
As instruments developed in range and quality of sound, they became harder to play, and the need for long training and practice grew. Listeners also appeared who wished to hear one or several instruments without singing, and as a result skilled players of organ and lute arose. Conrad Paumann (died 1473), the blind organist of Nuremberg, went from court to court playing as a master of the organ and was honored with a title, and this prepared the ground for music written to be performed on instruments alone. Until the fifteenth century almost all instrumental music apparently served song and dance and was studied and performed in order to accompany them; but paintings survive from the fifteenth century that show groups of players alone, with no singing or dancing. The oldest surviving work of instrumental music is Paumann's Fundamentum organisandi (1452), written originally as a model for playing the organ but also containing pieces for solo instruments.
Ottaviano de' Petrucci's ingenious use of movable metal type to print musical notation (1501) greatly lowered the cost of printing music. Dance music could be performed independently on any occasion, and so its forms gained great influence on instrumental music. From the succession of several "movements," each composed for a particular dance, the ground was prepared for the symphony and chamber quartet; as can be seen, in many cases the parts of such compositions were called by the names of their dances. Lute, viol, organ and harpsichord were well suited and popular for solo playing or for playing together with other instruments. Alberto da Ripa, lutenist at the courts of Francis I and Henry II, became so famous in his art that when he died the poets of France wrote elegies over his body.